NEWSFARMERS MARKETS

Hundreds of shoppers at the Los Angeles-area Mar Vista Farmers' Market were met with an unlikely scene this past Sunday. In addition to fruit and veggie vendors, bakers, complimentary dog-sitters, and a woman singing Bob Marley cover songs, locals encountered a swarm of bees. Well, a swarm of activists dressed as bees, that is.

This impromptu gathering of bees, beekeepers, and flower-wearing volunteers was an idea from Chelsea and Rob McFarland, founders of the non-profit, Honeylove. The couple created the non-profit to raise awareness about the current plight of the honeybee and to offer a solution: Legalize urban beekeeping in Los Angeles. Beekeeping in the city is currently illegal, and the McFarlands started a petition on Change.org asking the Mar Vista Community Council to allow urban beekeeping in the Mar Vista region of Los Angeles.

Honeybees have it rough these days, so the pollinators certainly need all the help that they can get. A phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder is causing bees to leave the hive, never to return. No one knows for sure what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder, but bees are up againt a host of threats: pesticides, fungal pathogens, loss of habitat, pollution, and climate change, just to name a few. Local urban hives could help the ailing species that's responsible for producing a full one-third of America's food supply.

Since December the Hollywood Farmers' Market has been fighting to keep its turf. The market, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next month, has peacefully inhabited a four-block section in the heart of Hollywood for its entire existence — until the Los Angeles Film School (LAFS) started complaining, that is.

In December of 2010, LAFS rescinded its permission for the street closure permit that the market requires, claiming that students needed access to the school's parking garage on Sundays. Since then a series of meetings, negotiations, and temporary reprieves have taken place, but so far no compromises have been reached.

The market's latest permit was set to expire last week, but now the local food site has been granted another 30-day extension.  The extension was announced in a joint statement by L.A. City Counsel President Eric Garcetti and Michael Woo, President of SEE-LA, the nonprofit that runs the Hollywood Market and other farmers' markets in the Los Angeles area.

Earlier this year, Minnesota officials introduced a bill that would make things easier for farmers trying to sell raw milk.  Currently raw milk sales are legal in the state, but only if consumers drive to the farm to buy it. This new bill would allow farmers to sell at farmers' markets, buying clubs, and direct deliveries, making life simpler for both purveyors and consumers. Of course Big Dairy raised immediate objections, citing safety concerns, and sent a hoard of lobbyists to complain about the bill during the recent Dairy Day event with lawmakers.  But something tells me that the real objection is over losing the monopoly they have over the processing and distribution of the state's dairy production.

But away in the Minnesota Capitol is not the only place this battle is raging. The fight hit the streets, too. Minnesota officials are cracking down on the sale of raw milk — exactly the kind of direct sales that would be legal under the proposed bill — and organic farmer Alvin Schlangen is taking the hit.

On March 9, 2011, officials say they seized unpasteurized milk and uninspected meat that Schlangen was selling out of his van and a south Minneapolis natural foods warehouse. Schlangen counters that he was doing nothing illegal.  He runs a private food-buying club called the Freedom Farms Coop that provides local, organic, and grass-fed produce, meat, and dairy to 85 families in the Twin Cities metro area.  And yes, that includes raw dairy products. He is a farmer himself and also sells his organic, pasture-raised chicken and eggs. He says that because members contractually lease the animals from whence these products come, then they are raising them for their own private use and no inspections are necessary. Clearly state officials disagree.

Does Hollywood have room for film productions and fresh produce? The battle to protect the Hollywood Farmers' Market has taken a dramatic plot twist as the Los Angeles Film School has unveiled plans to erect a large classroom building right at the heart of the cherished weekly market. The startling news follows the recent announcement that the film school plans to revoke its consent for the market's street closure permits in order to allow for more student parking on Sundays.

As the landowner, the school arguably may have the legal right to do as it sees fit with its property. But by reducing the size of the market or potentially forcing it out altogether, L.A. Film School threatens the livelihood of many farmers and could dramatically reduce access to fresh produce for thousands of people. And we're not just talking about depriving shoppers in Tinseltown of healthy foods, either: Low-income communities across the city rely on revenue from the Hollywood location to support smaller, local farmers' markets in economically disadvantaged areas.

The market was granted a 90-day extension thanks to an outpouring of public support, including more than 300 signatures from Change.org readers. However, we need to keep up the pressure to protect this invaluable farmers' market.

As anyone who frequents this site knows, our food system is becoming increasingly industrialized, with factory farms quickly replacing family and small-scale farms at a frighteningly fast pace. Using cheap and environmentally harmful farming practices and friendly government policies, massive corporate farming operations are wiping thousands of small farmers off the map (just like Walmart is wiping "mom and pop stores" off the map).

One group in Oregon, however, refuses to roll over and let the industrialized food system win. The organization is Friends of Family Farmers, which describes itself as a coalition of family farmers, consumers, and concerned citizens working to "foster an approach to agriculture that respects the land, treats animals humanely, sustains local communities, and provides a viable livelihood for family farmers."

To that end, the group has just written and introduced H.B. 2222, Oregon's Family Farm Act. It seeks to further family farm-friendly policies that will help small scale farms get food from the fields to your table. The bill would allow small farms to slaughter up to 1,000 chickens for use as human food without state or federal inspection, expand the state limit for raw milk producers (currently three cows or nine goats), establish family farm representatives on the State Board of Agriculture, and more. You can help support this important state bill by signing the organization's petition urging Oregon's State Legislature to pass the Family Farm Act.

Amidst increasing crackdowns on the sale of raw milk in many states, some are pushing for legalization. Minnesota is the latest state to consider an easing of restrictions on the sale of this controversial beverage. Raw milk sales are currently legal in Minnesota so long as they are on-farm and direct-to-consumer, but three Republican Senators introduced legislation Thursday that would allow the sale of raw milk in Minnesota farmers' markets as well as through deliveries to consumers and buying clubs.

Advocates are thrilled by this idea. After a crackdown on metropolitan buying clubs, raw milk devotees must drive long distances to buy their milk on the farm itself. Being able to buy at a farmers' market or allowing the farmer to deliver would maintain that face-to-face accountability, but allow for a great deal more flexibility.

Raw milk, in case you were wondering, is milk that has not been pasteurized in order to kill harmful bacteria. Advocates claim that pasteurization also kills beneficial bacteria and enzymes, and that the health benefits these substances bring far outweigh the legal and health risks.

The truth is most likely somewhere in the middle. Neither the health risks nor the health benefits are as extreme as some on each side claim. But it is true that raw milk must be produced under exceptionally sanitary conditions, generally out-ruling factory farms — and this is perhaps the best argument for the beverage.

Food has become an increasingly complicated and political issue, as readers of this blog know all too well. It can be hard just to sort through all the different issues. In the face of factory farms, Big Ag, mono-cropping, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and all the rest that comes along with our modern food system, trying to affect any change as an individual can feel daunting. But it doesn't have to.

Take, for example, Carla Crownover from Austin, T.X. A year ago, Crownover decided she'd had enough of our industrial food system and decided to quit shopping at grocery stores altogether for an entire year. That year has just come to a close, and Crownover says she's learned a lot about her food and doesn't have plans to go back to the grocery store .

Instead pushing her cart up and down supermarket aisles, Crownover gardened, shopped at farmers' markets, and went to local farms to get her food. She had already been a pretty conscientious shopper, avoiding highly processed and packaged "food," but after watching the documentary Food, Inc., she swore off industrially farmed food entirely. "Everything about factory farming [in the film] disgusted me," Crownover said, reports Take Part. "I like to eat beef, but I don't want the animal to have to live a horrible and unhealthy life so that I can have a steak."

We're all living in a sea of stuff: processed foods wrapped in yards of packaging, gas-guzzling vehicles, disposable containers, an overflowing closet of clothes, gadgets, gizmos, and whatchamacallits. We don't really need most of this junk — we're just all slaves to the "gotta-have-it" mentality that leaves us with empty wallets and massive carbon footprints.

But it's a new year, and that means turning over a new leaf. YES! Magazine is running a unique campaign that offers folks the chance to cleanse their clutter and reduce their carbon footprints. The publication's "No Impact Week" challenges people to take a good, hard look at their lifestyles and see what they can do to tread a little more lightly on our resource-strapped planet.

The challenge began yesterday and runs through this coming Sunday (1/9), but it's not too late to sign up. The week is broken down by adding a new carbon-reducing task each day. Today, for example, people are asked to reduce their trash output by doing things like ditching disposables in favor of reusable containers, packaging, and serving ware. Tomorrow focuses on transportation, encouraging participants to seek out emissions-free forms of transit like biking and walking. Each day covers a different segment of consumers' lives, like Energy and Water Use.

After nearly losing its street-closure permit and thus a quarter of its space, the Hollywood Farmers' Market has been granted a 90-day extension to give organizers time to work out a dispute resolution with the Los Angeles Film School.

The school recently announced that it requires access to the parking structures that the market blocks on Sunday mornings because it plans to offer more classes during that time. In order to get those parking spaces, the school said it would no longer grant approval for the farmers' market's street closure permits. Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles (SEE-LA), the group that operates the market, would lose about $170,000 in revenue — revenue which helps support seven other markets — if it lost that space.

Luckily, City Council President Eric Garcetti, a strong market supporter, helped the two sides work out this temporary compromise while they (hopefully) work out a solution.

This turn of events came after a swift and loud outcry by market supports. Councilmember Garcetti's office received more than 1,000 emails and phone calls from defenders of the market in just a few days, including those from Change.org's petition. As a result, Councilmember Garcetti, who represents the Hollywood District, reiterated Thursday his commitment to the Hollywood Farmers' Market and to maintaining it's current size, number of vendors, and location at the centralized hub of Ivar and Selma at which it currently resides.

The Hollywood Farmers' Market holds a special place in my heart; it was my first farmers' market. It's a bit of a sprawling behemoth as far as farmers' markets are concerned — it takes up four blocks smack-dab in the middle of Hollywood every Sunday — but it's chock-full of local producers who are passionate about sustainability and who will be the first to tell you all about voting with your fork.

The Hollywood Market's size and location draws in many people who may not have been exposed to a farmers' market before. I was certainly one of those people years ago. It's a community fixture that's operated for 19 years without incident. But now, suddenly, the market is threatened with a severe size reduction.

The nearby Los Angeles Film School says it's revoking its consent to close one of the four big streets the market inhabits. The market blocks access to two of the school's parking lots every Sunday morning, and the school says that it wants to offer more classes during that time. The Farmers' Market says the revoking of that much space would mean that 50 farmers would lose their places, representing $3 million of income annually and a loss of $170,000 per year in revenue for the market itself.

That lost money wouldn't just hurt the Hollywood market, though. Revenue from the farmers' market helps the non-profit in charge, Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles (SEE-LA), to run seven other markets in the Los Angeles area. Many of these markets set up shop in low-income neighborhoods like Watts, Crenshaw, and South-Central LA. According to SEE-LA's chief executive, Pompea Smith, the loss of revenue would mean that the non-profit would almost certainly have to close some of those markets. The ripple effect could mean the loss of access to fresh, local produce for thousands of families — many of them in low-income neighborhoods and food deserts — all for a few parking spaces. Ironically, the nearby Jack in the Box also opposes the continued street closures.